Scottish football increasingly looks like a best mate who has gone off with some rich, middle-class woman and is now embarrassed to go drinking with you in your spit'n'sawdust local rather than some no smoking trendy nightclub. He's embarrassed he used to admit liking The Clash (God rest your soul, Joe Strummer) rather than Simply Red and now wears Dolce and Gabbana rather than Army and Navy. Your mate tries to tell you spending Saturdays following the arrows on the floor in Ikea is better than football but you know he's lying to himself and to you. This is modern football - the people we hate most have stolen our best mate from us. Is it any wonder I’m bored? I'm bored because the Scottish Premier League is a non-event for ten of the twelve clubs and is infiltrated by passionless footballers from France or from the former Dutch colonies. I'm bored because all the teams from Hearts down to Motherwell are as poor as each other. If they all swapped shirts you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them. A bland uniformity rules. I'm bored because the transfer window has robbed us of transfer speculation - about the only thing that gets us through these extended periods of tedium. Wondering whether your club's going to sign someone from the Lithuanian Second Division (sore point – Ed) in July is all we're left with.
I'm bored to death with international matches because they're are virtually meaningless now that club football is so much more important than playing for your country. However, if you're Scottish, you can get a cap simply by turning up at an Scotland game with two legs and by staying awake long enough. In fact, you don’t even have to be Scottish….. I'm bored because managers are now like bland, spin inducing politicians. They stand, track-suited, against a noticeboard plastered with advertising logos and blurt out the same boring rubbish after every game and because there's nothing else to report on, it's covered in excruciating detail. At least the BBC tries. ITV's coverage is still embarrassing and Sky Sports News is psychotically pitiful in its desperation to find something interesting to say about football twenty-four hours a day.
This is how it’s going be from now until the clubs stop bringing in players from Bulgaria or Slovakia and grow their own instead. It can't happen soon enough. This is how its going to be until the game starts being about guts and glory and pride and not about paying one-footed players five grand a week; until it's not about pleasing corporate sponsors, TV executive, middle class social commentators, businessmen or corpulent, overpaid right-wing journalists. I've loved the game all my life because it was exciting, unpredictable, aggressive, passionate but you tell me where I can watch brilliant, exciting passionate football now? Answers on the messageboard…….. | ||||||
Team Ger Harley (ger@scottishfitba.net) |
